Archive - Aug 2008

For those of you that are following our travels...

When we last left you, Justin and I were spending the night in Wisconsin. Tonight I am reporting from Butte, Montana. But let's back up first.

We left Wisconsin to work our way thru Minnesota and into South Dakota. But even before entering South Dakota we started seeing 'Wall Drug' signs back in MN. Most of driving thru South Dakota was the same, flat open spaces. Things didn't start to get really interesting until we stopped off to look at the Corn Palace. The highway signs were too good to pass it by, "Be A-Maize-D" and "Come see the Ear-chitecture" And yes it was "Spectacu-ear".

Our next stop was at Badlands National Park. We didn't have a lot of time, so we stuck to the loop drive but it was quite a sight. We were lucky enough to time our visit at sunset and we got some great views. We also had dinner here at the lodge. Now my parents may remember a time (around 3rd grade) that I decided that I wanted to be a Native American, we had spent a long time on this unit in class. My Dad tried to explain how that wouldn't really work... and then to dissuade me from this by telling me that if I did manage it I would only be able to eat corn grits for the rest of my life. Well that was enough for me, even then I couldn't imagine life without pasta, so I gave up on my quest. But Dad you were WAY WRONG, for dinner in park I had some Sioux Indian tacos, which is basically buffalo meat tacos, but the best part is the fry bread. Why didn't someone tell me about fry bread before, its so YUM! What person wouldn't like to eat tacos on fried dough!

We left Badlands, visited Wall Drug, and spent the night in Rapid City. We woke up early (thank you very much iphone for getting the time change wrong) and made it to Mount Rushmore by 8:30am. In actuality it was a good time to be there, there were a lot more tourists there when we were leaving. We got some great views, walked around the president trail and I learned about how it was built.

Next we were back on the road, with a goal of getting to Montana for the night. States are much MUCH bigger here then I am used too, but tonight we are staying in Butte, MT. I wasn't too excited about about Montana until we started to see some of the views against the mountains. We also had dinner at an excellent brewpub called Montana Ale Works in Bozeman. That was some good eats!

Stay tuned for more, we are crossing the Rockies tomorrow!

After spending last week in Connecticut finishing up loose ends (if he has time, maybe Justin can inform you about the wonders of the CT DMV) we started our road trip to Oregon yesterday.

Due to some time restraints we are keeping our route pretty direct, and following I-90 the entire way. Which means we left Hartford and headed up to Albany, then Buffalo and spent the first night just across the border in Pennsylvania near Erie. The most interesting part was being stuck in a hail storm, with hail the size of ping-pong balls bouncing off the car. All we could do was pull over and try not to wince everytime one struck the car. Turns out we have some dents on the hood and roof that we need to figure out what we are going to do.

This morning we cut across the top of PA, travelled thru Ohio (seeing Cleveland and Toledo from the road), drove along the top border of Indiana, thru Chicago and we just entered Wisconsin and are headed toward Madison. So that makes it 3 new states for Michelle, and 1 for Justin.

We are ending the night in Wisconsin Dells, which it turns out is a hotspot for water parks, they are everywhere. Another good thing about Wisconsin- cheese, we just may have to make a grocery run before we leave the state.

Well, again we've fallen a bit silent on the blog, but that's because we're moving again -- from the East Coast to the West! We'll be living in Portland, Oregon for the next few months, something we've wanted to do for years. We'll actually be living a bit south of Portland proper in Wilsonville, and Michelle will be working in Woodburn, but it at least gets us to the area for a while to see if we want to stay longer.

We're actually headed on the road momentarily, so stay tuned for updates. We're taking a northern route, mostly sticking to I-90, so we'll hit a couple new states for both of us (Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming).

See you on the other side!